Christ's leaving of Father and Mother

Christ’s leaving of Father and Mother

For to be Joined to His Bride – The Church

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Ephesians 5:31-32:  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.’  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”

            I am persuaded that in these verses, the Apostle Paul expresses his belief that our Lord Jesus fulfilled, in a redemptive manner, the text describing the marriage ordinance found in Genesis 2:24 where God blesses marriage and says “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  When Adam arose from his sleep and found that he had a wife he said “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23)  For the believer, for the Christian who finds their joy being in union with Christ, surely we can believe that when Our Lord died on the cross for our sins and slept that sleep like unto that of Adam, that he arose on the third day knowing he had secured through his sleep a bride, the Church of which he has said in so many ways “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”  This is who we are, members of Christ’s Church, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, His bride in spiritual union with him now and forevermore.  Once we begin to realize that Jesus left father and mother to take for himself a bride in his sleep upon the cross, we can begin to see the gentle writing on the text of Holy Scripture how Jesus did indeed leave both father and mother to do this on our behalf and enter an eternal covenant of love forevermore with his beloved church.

            Perhaps it is easier to see this in how Jesus left his father.  Philippians 2:5-11 shows us how although Jesus was equal with God, he left the heavens to become of no reputation, taking on the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of man and becoming obedient in that form of life even unto death, a death on a cross.  It was a death for our sins.  It was the death our sins deserved according to the Holy Scriptures.  But Jesus died in our place, with us and our sins joined to him.  This was the great transaction.  Jesus died, but so did every believer united to him by faith.  Jesus died for our sins and for us.  Let it astonish us, as if we were for the first time believing in him, that in his death is the death both of our deaths and our sins.  Three days later he rises up from the dead and we who died in him rise with him; bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.  We are his holy Church and eternal bride.

            It is I think fairly easy to see how Jesus left his father even as the Nicene Creed teaches those who recite this ancient creed to say about Jesus the Son of God; “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.”  But perhaps we see his leaving his mother less so, especially those of us who came from Protestant backgrounds.  It is more clear to Catholics and Orthodox for they have learned to believe that in coming to Christ that they celebrate a relationship to the virgin who gave birth to the Son, the woman blessed above all other women, the fulfillment of the promise in Genesis that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.  But a reading of the Scriptural texts showing Jesus’ relationship with his mother writes gently of his gradual separation from her despite his great love for her as he heads to the cross.

            This is foreshadowed in Simeon’s prophecy and blessing concerning how Jesus (an infant in the temple in Mary’s arms) was appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, to which he added that the blessed Mary herself was to feel the piercings of her son in her soul.  I suspect that when the blessed Mary consented for God to become man in her womb that she might bear forth into the world he who is both God and Man, she well understood that this act for which she would be declared “blessed among women” was an act of great favor from God but also a commitment to great suffering for in every suffering that this suffering servant and Savior was to be pierced, so would his dear mother be pierced in her soul.  I suspect she understood these things if only by an inkling and yet she freely chose to receive the blessing and suffering on our behalf for Mary freely gave her consent to becoming heaven’s gateway into the fallen world for she said to the revelation of what was to be done, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.”  So she opened her womb to the Lord even as God opened her womb for Jesus to enter our world.

            The first scene where we see Jesus beginning to leave his mother is when he is twelve years of age in the temple.  His mother and Joseph and all his family members are traveling for the Passover.  He gets separated from the rest of the entourage.  His mother and Joseph look frantically for him.  Finally they find him in the temple.  His parents ask him “Why hast thou so dealt with us?”  They explain to him that his actions had them sorrowing as if he was lost from them.  The innocence of a twelve year old boy replies, asking them, “Didn’t you know I would be about my father’s business?”  There was business for which he had come to earth and it would lead to his separation from them before it could ever lead to his reunion with them.  Many were to fall and to rise.  His mother treasured these things in her heart.

            In the wedding at Cana of Galilee, our Lord seems to have had a sense of what his glory entailed.  He would marry in the day of his glory, a marriage like that described by Moses’ wife when cutting the circumcision on Moses’ sons; she tossed the foreskins at Moses’ feet and calls him her bridegroom of blood.  Jesus is quite possibly looking to his own wedding day when his mother tells him they have no wine at the wedding feast.  He takes water (the symbol of baptism) and turns it into wine (a symbol of joy in the fellowship with God) and does his first miracle.  This is the finest wine which is to be drunk and received as a forerunner to the feast of the Holy Communion.  Once more as Protestants we have such a horrible understanding of this passage.  We imagine conflict between Jesus and his mother.  But in reality it is not conflict that is seen here, but Jesus’ own realization that he must soon separate from his mother to be joined to his bride, as the bridegroom both of death and resurrection; of the fall and rise of many in Israel.

            Finally on the cross he takes care of his last earthly business by turning his care for his mother over to St. John.  He is suffering on the cross and he makes his selection of the one who is to care for his mother following his physical departure from earth.  In a few moments, from that cross He will say “It is finished.”  He will have left father and mother and will have been joined to his bride dying for her sins, that as they fell together unto death on the cross they might rise together.  “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh not until death do us part, but through death unto resurrection and into everlasting eternity.  This is a great mystery, a mystery of divine love being poured out, wholly by grace, upon men and women by the God who is love.